


Five Times Geoffrey Really Should Have Admitted That Darren Is a Fucking Genius

by spuffyduds



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: 1000-3000 words, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-20
Updated: 2010-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-06 12:46:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/pseuds/spuffyduds





	Five Times Geoffrey Really Should Have Admitted That Darren Is a Fucking Genius

1) **The Fireproofing of the Curtain**

"_Fire_ marshal?" Geoffrey says. "For an off-campus production? Tell him we're too poor to have a fire. We can barely afford flash pots. Do we _have_ to have flash pots?"

"I could scarcely tell him anything," Darren says. "He was quite brisk with me on the phone. And he's going to inspect us tomorrow. And the flash pots are _essential_."

"Well, we can at least get some of the extra furniture cleared from backstage. Oh, God, he's going to check the curtain, isn't he? That curtain would go up like a, like a curtain."

"The fireproofing is prohibitively expensive, isn't it?"

"We could afford about a square foot of fireproofing. Christ. _Christ_. We're closing before we open."

Darren has an epiphany, one of those moments when he could feel the touch of God if he thought there was one, and says "No, we're not."

"What? How?"

"Leave it," Darren says, assaying a small bow, "to me."

He buys a tiny amount of ludicrously expensive fireproofing, and soaks one corner of the curtain in it overnight. Geoffrey moves furniture and carts off stacks of newspapers and very obviously _wants_ to ask, but doesn't, which amuses Darren greatly.

When the fire marshal shows up Geoffrey conducts him around the newly pristine backstage, and makes an attempt (a quite obvious one, Darren thinks) to chat and chivvy the marshal out the door without him getting near the curtain.

The marshal strides over nonetheless, looking very serious and protective of the public health, and Darren makes a beautiful extemporaneous speech about how they are practically without funds at all but spent nearly their entire budget on fireproofing, because really one must protect one's audience. And the whole time he is making this speech he is holding up the one extremely fireproofed corner of the curtain and touching his lighter flame to it, with a notable lack of reaction from the curtain.. Geoffrey, behind the marshal, is actually making an impressed face at him. "This curtain," Darren says, "would be unaffected by an epic conflagration. This curtain would survive the Hindenburg explosion."

Geoffrey goes from an impressed expression to a "rein it in!" one and waves his hands a little.

The fire marshal pats Darren on the back. "You don't see that kind of public safety concern from most students," he says.

Once he's left, Darren, gracious in victory, permits himself only the smallest of superior smiles.

Geoffrey, less gracious in defeat, offers up no verbal admiration. But he does buy Darren several rounds that night.

 

2) **The Really Very Minor Goring of the Grandmother**

"I told you the flash pots were a bad idea."

"The flash pots were _essential_. 'Medea' without explosions is just some neurotic Greeks with a questionable approach to child-rearing."

"The _goat_ didn't like the flash pots."

"The goat failed to enter into the spirit of the production. I was disappointed, really. He seemed to be attuned to my vision in rehearsals."

Geoffrey puts his head in his hands. "This was catastrophic."

"It was marvelous! It was unforgettable! When has the Toronto Star ever covered an off-campus student production?"

"They wrote about the production because a front-row grandmother was gored by a panicked goat!"

"Only very lightly. And there's no such thing as bad publicity."

"She's ninety-_seven_!"

"Geoffrey. Sometimes an artist has to suffer for his art. And sometimes the audience does."

 

3) **The Purchasing of the Poster, with Attendant Scoring of the Phone Number**

"What on earth is _this_ doing here?" Darren says, pausing in his shuffling through posters. Geoffrey is nearby, in the stacks of Shakespeare individual-play paperbacks, groaning loudly at the horrific editions being assigned to undergraduates. He wanders up and looks over Darren's shoulder.

"Look," Darren says, and flips some more. "Cutesy unicorn poster, twee unicorn poster, Garden of Earthly Delights, unicorn poster _with_ a rainbow..."

Geoffrey shrugs. "Well, it _does_ have unicorns..."

"But--" Darren says, and that's all he gets out before the little blonde student-store desk clerk shows up.

"Oh, that's my _favorite_ poster!" she says. To Geoffrey, of course. But Geoffrey replies, "I just find it...baffling. I mean...why is that man in a clamshell? Why is there a giant strawberry?" He holds both hands out in a gesture that is probably meant to be quizzical; but since his hands are still in his coat pockets it makes him look like a large disheveled bat.

Darren senses, and seizes, an opening. "I've always _loved_ this piece. It _speaks_ to me," he says.

"What does it say?" Geoffrey says. "'Hieronymus Bosch did many, many drugs?'"

But the little blonde clerk swivels her pretty face toward Darren instantly, says, "Yes, so symbolic! The cherries! And the snake!"

"Ah, yes, the _snake_," Darren says, with every ounce of innuendo he can muster, and steps a little closer to her. "The fish walking on land!" he adds rapturously, and hopes she doesn't ask what he thinks that symbolizes, as he hasn't a clue.

Geoffrey rolls his eyes and wanders off again.

When they leave the store, he eyes the rolled-up poster sticking out of the top of Darren's rucksack, and says, "Trying to impress her?"

"No," Darren says, "succeeding." He pulls the poster out and over his shoulder--rather dramatically, like an arrow from a quiver--and shows Geoffrey the back, on which Briony wrote her name and phone number.

"She dots her i's with little hearts," Geoffrey says.

"Jealous."

"I am _not_."

"Watch and _learn_, Geoffrey," Darren says, and is highly pleased with himself the rest of the day.

 

4) **The Disrobing of the Daughters**

"I can see an argument for _Lear_ being naked," Geoffrey says. "That works for the plot _and_ thematically, he's been stripped of _everything_, but--"

"Of course you can see an argument for the old ugly actor being naked."

"He's twenty! He's younger than Goneril!"

"Fine, the actor in old ugly makeup."

"Why in God's name would his daughters be--"

"Geoffrey. _Ob_viously, the loveliness of their dishabille would provide a contrast to the tragic rot of their souls, in Regan and Goneril's case, and in Cordelia's case, she--well--she--have you _seen_ Cordelia?"

"Have you?"

"No, but I'd like to."

"You just want to sell tickets."

"It's quite the large percentage of our final mark, Geoffrey. A big audience certainly wouldn't hurt--Doctor Sampson is known to look more favorably upon student productions that turn a profit."

Geoffrey pinches the bridge of his nose. "I'll concede on the naked if you drop all the animals."

"The greyhound is perfectly behaved."

"The greyhound is a crotch-sniffer. If the daughters are naked--"

"Oh, fine, no greyhound."

Geoffrey gives him a suspicious look. "I didn't say no greyhound. I said _no animals_."

"You can't _seriously_ expect me to give up the armadillo."

 

5) **The Drinking of Altogether Too Much, and the Application of an Unusual Remedy for Nerves**

"_Epically_ drunken," Darren says, lurches slightly, and bounces off Geoffrey. He doesn't quite fall down, and indeed appears to have retained forward locomotion. Excellent. "This is seventy-eight thousand lines of iambic platypus drunk. All previous drunks have been haiku. Limerick. Very very small."

"True," Geoffrey says. "True true true. Left!" He links an arm with Darren and they negotiate a corner successfully.

"_Beautiful_," Darren says. "You have the soul of a dancer."

"You have the soul of an advertising executive," Geoffrey says, but he grabs Darren's scarf and tickles Darren's nose with it.

"Ha! Yes. Advertising is the new film. Film is the new theater. But film's ancient now, so theater is the new. Something. Cave paintings! Here's my building. What are we celebrating?"

"Last day of class," Geoffrey says. "My acceptance at New Burbage."

"I do _pity_ you," Darren says, and really, he feels a sudden intense urge to weep as he fumbles through his ring of keys. "Locked into a provincial theater when my options are limitless."

"Still no offers?" Geoffrey says, but softly, and Darren will be having none of _that_, thank you, so he waves a hand, says, "I terrify my countrymen. Europe will doubtless be more receptive. Indubitably."

Geoffrey giggles, leans his forehead against the door, almost falls in when Darren finds the right key. "Do you even know what that _means_?"

"It cannot, under any circumstances, be dubited," Darren says, and starts up the stairs. Slowly.

Geoffrey snorts behind him, then says, "Wait. I seem to be, I'm here."

"That cannot be dubited either."

"I mean, I'm not home," Geoffrey says, reaches the top of the stairs, and makes an unsuccessful attempt to keep climbing. Darren catches him.

"You had better not try to get there," he says, and Geoffrey for once doesn't argue.

Darren finds some rather musty blankets stuffed in the top of a closet, tosses them on the floor beside his bed. Geoffrey tries for several minutes to spread them out, and they just get smaller and more folded.

"Oh, _fuck_ it," he says finally, strips down to boxer shorts and flops down on the blankets.

Darren expects immediate snores, but Geoffrey starts talking, burbling on about New Burbage. _Burbaging on, ha!_ Darren thinks, and manages to more or less ignore it, drifting toward unconsciousness himself, until Geoffrey, in the middle of a long and tedious list of every serving-boy or Midsummer fairy he might be eligible for in his first festival, suddenly says, "I'm terrified."

"What?" Darren says.

"What if I'm not good enough? Or, or if I don't have the right _look_, you know sometimes it's all about that even if you're good, and I _think_ I'm good, I'm pretty sure I'm good, at least _here_. But good there is going to have to be a lot _better_, and my father said don't come crawling to _him_ if I'm starving, I had plenty of chances to go to business school, and Christ what if I'm not good at _all_, what if I'm _completely deluded_?"

Darren sighs. He would really, really like to sleep at some point. "Get up here. Relax."

Geoffrey climbs in, but he's still talking, "Thanks, thanks, more comfortable. Yes. But I don't think that's going to relax me. I don't think I am ever going to relax again for the rest of my life, Darren, what if I starve? I could starve. I could die. I could get terrible reviews."

"Oh for God's sake, Geoffrey, shut _up_," Darren says, sits up and shoves a hand in Geoffrey's shorts.

"Gah?" Geoffrey says. Darren thumps him lightly on the nose with his other hand, and he shuts up.

Things are unpromising for a couple of minutes, what with alcohol and the specter of starvation, but expertise will always triumph; and soon Geoffrey is fully participatory. Noisy, even, Darren notes with some pride.

Noisy, and then messy. Darren sponges them off a bit with one of the musty blankets, and stretches back out.

"Ah," Geoffrey says. "I didn't know you were...uh...are you?"

"I spit on your bourgeois labels," Darren says, and yawns.

"Of course you do," Geoffrey says, and yawns back.

Darren half-expects him, for once, to offer up a positive review; that was obviously a marvelously effective relaxation technique. But Geoffrey just scoots down further into the blankets, steals half the pillow, and rolls to face away.

Then he mumbles, barely audibly, "In some very strange way, I'm going to miss you." And the last thing Darren thinks, before he drifts off himself, is "That will suffice."

 

\--END--


End file.
